The Capsina. An Historical Novel

Night fell on a scene of panic and confusion. The last of the sunset had shown the van of the Turks no more than four miles off, with arms glistening red in the fire of the evening sky, moving steadily, though without hurry. The advance-guard of cavalry was already clear of the pass, and after an interval the main part of the army had been seen defiling out of it. They would enter the town in not more than two hours. Any one with a horse to sell, and a pistol to protect himself and it, could sell the beast for its value told a hundred times. Mules, oxen even, and calves were laden with valuables and kicked and goaded along the roads, away from the quarter from which the Turks were advancing. Had the executive council possessed the slightest authority or power of organization, much of this wild struggle for escape could have been avoided, but the executive council were hurrying like scared hares down to where a couple of Greek ships lay in the bay. There, too, were disgraceful things to see: more than one boat sent to convey the fugitives on to the ships was swamped by the stampeding crowds; others, private speculators, refused to take the panic-stricken folk on board, except at the payment of thirty piasters per head, and in one case only was the revolting greed properly punished, for a couple of men having agreed to pay the stipulated sum, were taken on board and straightway tipped the owner over his own gunwale into the water, and, heedless of his bubbling remonstrances, filled the boat with fugitives, denying him a place in it, and spent the next two hours in plying to and fro between the ship and the land.

But, meantime, the Greek garrison at Argos, consisting mainly of Albanians, had behaved with the utmost quietness and decency, and waited for orders. Hypsilantes, it was known, had been summoned by the terror-stricken council to join them in his new capacity of legislator on the ships, and he had returned answer that he would do no such thing; his place was where he could be useful, and as soon as the alarm was given, he, with Mitsos in attendance, Kolocotrones, Niketas, and a few others, met, and deliberated hastily what to do. It was quickly decided to destroy all the grain and forage in the town – as it was impossible to stand a siege – fill up the wells, and retire to Lerna, a heavy and small Greek camp, some two miles off on the sea-coast, defended on one side by the mountains, on one by the sea, on another by a large belt of swampy ground, which cavalry could not well pass. The Turks would hardly go on to Nauplia leaving them unattacked in their rear; if, on the other hand, they attacked, Lerna was well defended, and the dreaded Turkish cavalry at least were useless.

Above Argos, just outside the town, stands the Larissa, an old Greek fortress, subsequently built up by the Venetians. The hill it crowns is very steep and difficult of access, and it is well supplied with water. It was a matter of the first importance that this should not be let to fall, as had happened at Corinth, into the hands of the Turks, and a small body of volunteers, among whom was Mitsos, threw themselves into this, determining to hold it as long as possible. What artillery the Turks had they did not know, but unless they had heavy field-guns, there was a reasonable hope that for a time, at any rate, they could defend it successfully, and be another deterrent to the Turkish advance on Nauplia.

Meantime, while they were busy taking up as much provision as they could lay hands on, the rest set to with destroying forage, and generally making the place untenable; until a picket stationed at the Corinth gate gave the alarm that the Turks were near, at which all but those who were to keep the Larissa set off through the now deserted and silent streets for the new camp at Lerna.

All through the hot hours of the summer night the seemingly endless procession of Turks continued to enter Argos. One by one their watch and cooking fires were kindled until the town, empty an hour before, twinkled with lights. Dramali's troops numbered not less than ten thousand men, nearly the half of whom were cavalry. And at present he intended to keep this formidable force at Argos, until the fleet appeared which should bring provisions and supplies to Nauplia by sea. He could then make a simultaneous assault by land, as the Sultan had so curtly intimated, and establish his headquarters there. But until the fleet arrived he could do nothing which might help Nauplia, for he had to forage for his own supplies, and could throw none into the beleaguered fortress. And the fleet, it will be remembered, had already passed Nauplia going to Patras to fetch the new captain, Pasha Kosreff, in place of the victim of Kanaris's fire-ship. But of this Dramali knew nothing, and waited for its appearance to deliver the grand-coup in the manner prescribed to him at Constantinople. News of the taking of Argos by the Turks had blazed like stubble-fed fire through the Peloponnese. The incompetent and useless administration had gathered their skirts and fled, and the war once more was in the hands of the people, commanded, it might be, by many avaricious and greedy men, but by no cowards.

And as a thunder-cloud collects on some grilling afternoon on the hills, so from all sides did sullen bands, full of potential fire and tumult, gather and grow on the mountains round. To attack the Turks, with their great force of cavalry, on the plain was no sane scheme, and the lesson had been taught at Tripoli, and taught thoroughly. But, though no attack was made on the Turks, it was soon found that Dramali, with Heaven-sent stupidity, had neglected to hold the range of hills over which he had come, and gradually the Greeks amassed a force high on the four roads which crossed from Corinth. Niketas, with not less than two thousand men, was intrenched in the easternmost road, and murmured softly to himself the words he had learned from an English sailor, "This is dam fine!" and Kolocotrones, finding Lerna inconveniently crowded, removed to the mountains to the west of Argos.

And all waited – wild beasts, hungry.

For the time all party and personal jealousy ceased. Petrobey, with a thousand Mainats, came from the south and joined the Greek force assembled in the main camp, and the scornful clan, it was noticed, were very silent, as their habit was when there was work to the fore. He had a long conference with Hypsilantes, and to their council came Krevatas, a primate from the country of Sparta, a man made of blood, courage, and hatred, who would go about among the soldiers, seeing visions by day and night, and exclaiming, "The Lord is a man of war!" He had but little other conversation, and cried thus very frequently. Like Hypsilantes, Petrobey saw that there was no object to be served in attacking the Turks in Argos. Supposing the fleet came, and Dramali moved to the capture of Nauplia, they would have to attack then. If, on the other hand, something, as was now possible, had delayed the fleet, it was certain that Dramali's supplies could not last him very many days, for the Turks were foraging far and wide both for corn and provender for their horses, and when he retreated to Corinth, as he must needs do, the fleet not coming, there were the hills he had left unguarded to be passed, and Petrobey's blue eye danced, like the sun on water, and Krevali's exclamation was fit commentary.

Twice in the first day of his occupation Dramali directed an attack on the small band of some five hundred men in the Larissa, but finding that it was no easy matter to storm it, and thinking perhaps that the place was ill-watered and the defenders would surrender, shrugged his shoulders, and left it, as the Greeks had left Nauplia, to the slower but not less sure process of starvation. But Petrobey saw the immense strategical advantage of the place. Dramali could hardly advance to Nauplia, leaving a well-fortified citadel in his rear, into which the Greeks would pour as soon as he left Argos, and he insisted that the garrison should be increased.

"They may be as fierce as hawks and as swift," said he, "but their numbers are too small. Also, if we can throw men into it, we can also throw provisions. The lad Mitsos will be glad of that: he would eat a roe-deer as I eat an egg – at one gulp."

Yanni, who was with his father, looked up.

"Oh, if it is possible, let me go among them," he said, "for my place is with Mitsos."

Petrobey, another of whose sons had been killed that year in a skirmish, looked at the boy.

"Benjamin, too," he said, half smiling, half with entreaty. "Yet did he not come back safe to his father? So be it, Yanni. Now, let us talk how it is to be done. We will go on dear Nikolas's plan, and say all the impossible things, and so take what is left."

"Daylight," said Yanni, promptly.

"A great noise," remarked Hypsilantes, with the air of a man who says a good thing.

Petrobey laughed.

"So much is certain," he said. "But then comes a difficulty. If by night, as like as not the lads will think it is an attack from the Turk. Thus will Benjamin come home, shot through the head by his very dear friend Mitsos."

"Cannot we call to them as we approach?" said Yanni. "Or wait. Oh, father, cannot we signal during the day from the hills behind?"

Petrobey nodded.

"Not so bad," he said, "but of the men there, who knows the signal tongue?"

"Mitsos and I did signalling work at Tripoli."

"So you did. It is worth trying. Now the attention of the Turks on the night you enter, if the signalling goes well and enter you do, must be elsewhere. Perhaps your highness would conduct a skirmishing party with much noise and bush-firing and swift running away in the opposite quarter."

"I?" asked the prince, and a sudden glow of courage exalted the man. "I should sooner be of those who attempt to enter the Larissa."

Petrobey looked at him approvingly.

"It is an honorable service," he said, "and the Larissa is a steep hill. I then will see to the other. Now Yanni, off with you, and a nice, warm walk you will have. Get you to the hill behind the Larissa and signal till you attract their attention, or until your arms drop off like figs over-ripe. It is yet early, so say that a relief party will make the attempt to enter the citadel to-night, an hour before moonrise. They will climb the back of the hill, or wherever they find it unguarded. Those inside will know best the disposition of the Turkish troops."

The hours went on through the suffocating calm of mid-day, when no breeze stirs the still and stifling air, and the Greek camp at Lerna, lying against the mountain-side, was a bakehouse of heat. In the low, marshy ground below, among the vineyards and melon-patches which stretched down to the bay, they could see companies of Turkish soldiers, guarded by their cavalry, picking the grape-leaves as fodder for their horses, while the men gathered the only half-ripe fruit for themselves. Once a band of some fifty approached to within five hundred yards of the outworks which had been thrown up round the mills where the Greeks lay, and the Mainats on guard snarled and grumbled like caged lions who long to smite and crack the heads of those who look through their prison-bars. But the cavalry were too close to risk an attack, which must have ended in trampled flight and knifing, and they could only store up their hate for future use. On the other hand, the Greeks were equally secure, for the broken ground near the camp, intersected by channels and banks for irrigation, and further defended by the steep water-eaten banks of the torrent-bed of the Erastinus, now summer-dry, rendered the approach of the Turkish cavalry impossible, and a combined attack of Dramali's infantry would have been necessary to drive them out of their secure position. Such an attack Dramali could not afford to make: the object of his expedition was the relief of Nauplia, and until that was effected he dared not risk defeat. Several small skirmishes had indeed taken place, but Petrobey, pursuing his policy of keeping his men out of the reach of cavalry, had always forbade them to follow retreating Turks into open ground. Furthermore, the two Greek vessels moored not far off covered the open space which was near the bay across which the Turks must advance, and, in case of any massed attack, were ready to open fire on them. Meantime Petrobey, though burning to be at work, found a certain shrewd comfort in watching the Turks eating the unripe melons. "They are cool for the mouth," he said, "but burning fire in the bowels." And, indeed, before many days a sort of dysentery broke out among the Turkish troops, which added to the difficulties and hazards in which, as Dramali was soon to find, he had placed his army.

Kolocotrones had left Lerna to take up his position on the hills before Petrobey, with his Mainats, arrived, and it was to below an outlying post of his camp that Yanni climbed to signal to those in the Larissa. The day was extraordinarily hot, and his way lay over long, palpitating flanks of gray bowlder-covered hills. There all vegetation had long ago been shrivelled into brown, ashy wisps of stuff, though up higher, near the point to which he was making, a spring which gushed from the mountain-side still flushed an acre or two of cup-shaped hollow below it with living vegetation. The great green lizards alone seemed not to have been turned brown by the drought, and slipped pattering over the bowlders into cracks and crevices as Yanni passed. Overhead the sky was a brazen wilderness, deserted of birds, and the air over the hot mountain trembled and throbbed in an ague of heat. But Yanni went fast and very cheerfully. He carried no arms, for the Turks never went beyond the plain, and it was a healthier heat to walk just in linen trousers and shirt, open from neck to waist, than to lie sweltering in guard and under arms in the camp at the hills of Lerna.

An hour's climb gave him elevation sufficient to be able to see over the outer circuit of walls on the Larissa, and show him the sun-browned tops of the hill peopled with the tiny, living, moving specks of the garrison who held it. Below the base of the hill the lines of Turkish tents formed a circuit nearly complete, but at the back, where the rocks rose almost precipitously, there was a break in them. Whether the hill was accessible or not at that point he did not know – evidently the Turks seemed to think not – but if he succeeded in attracting the attention of the Greeks in the citadel, he could learn from them where was the best place to make the attempt. He had brought with him a strip of linen for the signalling, but finding the distance was greater than he anticipated, he saw that it would be too insignificant an object to be noticed, and, stripping off his shirt, he made wild waving with it, signalling again and again, "Mitsos! Mitsos Codones!"

For five minutes he stood there, with the sun scorching his uncovered shoulders like a hot iron, without attracting any attention; but before very much longer he saw a little white speck from the top of the citadel, also waving, it would seem, with purpose.

"Oh, Mitsos, is it you?" he said, aloud, and then repeated "Mitsos" as his signal, and waited.

The little speck answered him. "Yes, I am Mitsos," it said. "Who are you?"

Yanni laughed with delight.

"Yanni," he waved, "your cousin Yanni."

"Have the clan come."

"Many okes of them, under father. We are going to send a party to support you in the citadel to-night, an hour before moonrise. Be ready." There was a pause, and Yanni, forgetting that he was rather over a mile off, shouted out, "Do you see, little Mitsos?" and then laughed at himself. Soon the waving began again.

"We can hold the place, I think, but we are short of food."

And Yanni answered:

"Oh, fat cousin, we bring much food. Where shall we make the attempt?"

"From the back, between where you are standing and me. It is steep, but quite possible for those not old and fat. It is where you see no Turkish tents. Who is in command?"

"Hypsilantes."

"I am laughing," waved Mitsos, "for I see his big sword tripping him up. Go very silently. If the alarm is given, and the Turks attack you, we will help from above. Good-bye, Yanni; it is dinner-time, and the littlest dinner you ever saw."

Yanni put on his shirt again, and, seeing that Kolocotrones' outpost was not more than two hundred feet above him, though concealed from where he stood by a spur of rock, he bethought himself to go up there and get a drink of wine before he began his downward journey – for his throat was as dust and ashes – and also give notice of the intended relief. He found that Kolocotrones was there himself, and was taken to him.

That brave and avaricious man was short of stature, but of very strong make, and gnarled and knotted like an oak trunk; his face was burned to a shrivelled being by the sun, and he wore his fine brass helmet. Unlike Petrobey, who was scrupulously fastidious in the matter of clothes, cleanliness, and food, he cared not at all for the things of the body, and was holding a mutton-bone in the manner of a flute to his mouth, gnawing pieces off it, when Yanni entered. The old chief remembered him at Tripoli, and though he was on the most distant terms with the clan, who regarded him with embarrassing frankness as a successful brigand, he nodded kindly to the boy.

"Eat and drink," he said; "talk will come afterwards," and he would have torn him a shred of meat off the flute.

"Surely I will drink," said Yanni, seating himself, "for indeed it is thirsty work to stand in the sun. No, nothing to eat, thank you."

Kolocotrones poured him out wine into rather a dirty glass and when the boy had drank, "What is forward?" he asked. "Are you of Maina come?"

"A thousand of us. To-night we are sending a relief force to those in the citadel. I have been signalling to Mitsos with my shirt from the hill-side."

Now when money was not in the question, Kolocotrones was the most enthusiastic of patriots. There was certainly nothing to be got from the citadel, and he dropped his mutton flute and struck the table a great blow with his hand.

"That is very good," he said. "My compliments to the clan, and to Petrobey. Lad, but I have these Turks in the hollow of my hand. The fleet still comes not, and without the fleet how shall they relieve Nauplia, where already the besieged purchase food from the besiegers; they cannot hold Argos more than a week now, for here, too, their food is failing. Then they will try to get back to Corinth. All the hills are guarded, and I shall be there for them. Oh, I shall be there! and where would all of you be without old Kolocotrones to think for you, ay, and act for you when the time comes?"

Yanni was half amused, half offended, at the arrogance of the old chief, and took another great draught of wine, some bitter stuff; but, as Petrobey said, "That fellow cares nothing for what he eats, save that it should be meat; and nothing for what he drinks, save that it should be wet. Then answer me. Why did God give us a palate?"

Kolocotrones took another chew at his mutton-bone and tilted back his helmet a little, showing a bald forehead.

"Panos – my son Panos will be with me," he continued, "and the lad and I will chase them like sheep and kill them like chickens. Also there will be much gold."

And his eyes grew small and bright like a bird's.

Yanni's scornful young nose was in the air by this time, but his manners forbade his saying just what he thought of Panos, and he rose to go.

"I am cooler," he said, "and less dusty in the throat. I will be going back. Indeed, I think I would have paid weight for weight in gold for that wine."

"I wish you had," chuckled Kolocotrones, whose humor was of the most direct. "But it is a free gift, lad, and I do not grudge it you."

Yanni saluted and retired. Once out of the camp he executed a sort of war-dance of scorn down the mountainside.

"A free gift!" he muttered. "A free gift, indeed! What else should a draught of sour wine be? Thank God, I am of Maina, and not of that stock. I would sooner keep a khan than be that general or his pasty son."

And Yanni, bursting with indignation, went scrambling down the mountain-side, thinking how fine it was to be a Mavromichales.

The arrangements for the relief party were not long in making. Petrobey, as soon as night fell, was to lead a band of Mainats towards the southeast of Argos – an uneven tract of ground, full of bushes and marsh, and much intersected by dikes – where the cavalry could not be utilized against them. They were to advance as close as they safely might to the gate of the town, fire, and run away, come back and fire, and generally give color to the idea that a noisy and badly planned attack was being delivered from that quarter. The effect of this would be to make the enemy alert and watchful of movements in that direction; in any case, their eyes and ears would not be too keen on the Larissa, which was quite on the opposite side of the town. Orders were given that if they were pursued in any number, they should run away, scattering as they went, but return again and keep up the disturbance till the moon rose. By the rising of the moon the relief party would already have made good their entrance into the fortress, unless they had been repulsed, and there was no longer any necessity for the others to dance about like will-o'-the-wisps in the marshes. It would be dark by nine, and the moon did not rise till midnight, so that the others would have ample time to cross the two miles of plain which lay between them and the Larissa in the cover of the dark, and do their best. The relief party, consisting of between four and five hundred Mainats, were nominally under the command of Hypsilantes, but Yanni alone, having seen from the mountain the lay of the ground on the far side of the Larissa, and alone knowing the disposition of the Turkish blockading lines there, was to act as guide. The object of the expedition being in the main to get supplies into the fortress, they took with them a flock of goats, all carefully muzzled so that they should not bleat to each other, and on the back of each goat was a hamper of loaves. "Quite like little men on a journey," said Yanni. Round the beasts the men marched in a sort of hollow oblong, thus forming a pen for them. When they came near the lines of the Turks a small reconnoitring party was to be sent on to see if the steep rocks were practicable and unguarded. If so, they should make a dash for these, dragging two or three goats with them, which, once past the Turkish lines, they would unmuzzle, so that the others, hearing them bleat, might follow. It was impossible to take sheep, for the way up the rocks, though practicable for men and, therefore, for goats, might not be so for the less nimble animals. The whole expedition, its striking irregularities, its hazards, its remoteness from anything commonplace, was after the hearts of the clan, and they grinned to each other as the goats, with their luggage strung on their backs, were driven into their living pen and the door formed up between them.

They had to go slowly, for the leading and retention of the beasts was not very easy, and before they had marched half a mile they heard shouts begin from the opposite quarter of the town and knew that Petrobey's party had got to their dancing. Soon the black, gigantic walls loomed nearer, sharp cut against the blue-black of the star-sown sky, and they halted behind a bluff of upstanding rock, while Yanni and some others moved forward to examine the ground. A hundred yards farther on they got a good view of the Turkish camp-fires, so that they could tell, roughly, the disposition of the troops, and here they halted in council.

"It is even as Mitsos said," whispered Yanni. "There is a great gap in its lines, and that is, no doubt, where the steep rocks came into the plain. He said a man could climb there, and I told him the Prince was coming, at which he laughed, thinking he would trip up. Shall we do this?"

Kostas Mavromichales, the brother of Petrobey, shook with suppressed laughter.

"The assault of the goats," he said. "Oh, a very fine plan! I thought of it."

They were about four hundred yards from the Turkish lines, but the ground, evilly for their purpose, was level and without cover, and the more speedily this was passed the better. The gap in the lines was about three hundred yards in width; immediately above them the rocks began. Once there, every one must find his own path, the leaders dragging forward an unmuzzled goat or two to encourage the others. It was agreed that Kostas and Yanni should take one between them, Athanasi and Dimitri a second, and two other Mainats a third.